


Hounds of Love

by icanseethroughtimesstuff



Series: Thasmin Week [6]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Action, F/F, Romance, Running, minor threat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-25
Updated: 2019-01-25
Packaged: 2019-10-16 04:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17542694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icanseethroughtimesstuff/pseuds/icanseethroughtimesstuff
Summary: While trying to find a part for the Tardis on an abandoned ship, the Doctor and Yaz end up trapped and have to think their way out of the problem.  The Doctor is distracted by how much Yaz has been avoiding her lately and once to talk about what's bothering her...





	Hounds of Love

**Author's Note:**

> For Thasmin Week. 25/1 - First Kiss

“So this is just a quick stop, right Doc, in and out?” Graham looked around the apparently deserted ship uneasily.  Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary except for the fact that it was apparently completely deserted.

“Absolutely Graham,” the Doctor replied distractedly, checking the readings on the sonic, “they won’t even know we were here.  Ship’s been abandoned for a while, we’ll just grab the power converter and be on our way.”

Yaz examined the nearby monitors.  “Doesn’t look like it’s been abandoned long Doctor, everything’s still running normally.”

“Ships from the 63rd century have power cores that can run for thousands of years without burning out,” the Doctor protested, “trust me, no one’s been here in a while.”

Ryan shuddered.  “It gives me the creeps though.”

“You lot don’t half like to find trouble where there is none, do you?” the Doctor eyed them all.  “When have I ever dragged you into the middle of something dangerous?”

Yaz smirked at her, “Do you really want us to answer that?”

The Doctor made to respond and then sighed and shrugged ruefully.  “That’s actually a fair cop.  But everything’s fine this time I swear.”  She looked down at the sonic again.  “Now according to the readings the converter is down one of these two corridors,” she pointed down two corridors heading in opposite directions.  “We’ll split into two teams, Ryan and Graham you head that way,” she said, gesturing to her left, “me and Yaz will take the other way.”  She glanced up just in time to see Ryan waggle his eyebrows at Yaz and for her to respond with a glare and small shake of her head.

She’d started noticing more odd interactions between the two of them lately.  More than once she’d walking in on them in various rooms in the Tardis huddled in a corner together whispering, only to stop when they noticed the Doctor there.  These interactions made her feel strangely annoyed and frowny but she couldn’t put her finger on why.  She’d tried asking Yaz what it was all about but she’d just mumble something about a ‘personal problem’ and hurry off, not even making eye contact.

And that was another thing.  Up until recently the Doctor was the one Yaz came to with her problems but in the last month or so she seemed to be avoiding her.  The Doctor found herself missing her chats with her friend, and the last time she’d caught her squirreled away with Ryan she’d gone back to the console room, abused the custard cream pedal and sulked for an hour.

Shaking her head she made towards the entrance of the corridor and turned to see Yaz hanging back reluctantly.  “You alright Yaz?” she asked curiously.

Yaz jumped as if she’d forgotten where she was.  “What?  Oh yeah, fine, sorry just spaced out for a minute.”

“You don’t have to come with me if you don’t want,” the Doctor said quietly, “you can go with Ryan and I’ll take Graham.”  If there was some kind of…something brewing between Yaz and Ryan she didn’t want to get in the way of it, regardless of her own confused feelings.

“What?  No,” Yaz responded quickly, “I want to come with you, I just got distracted.”

“If you’re sure,” the Doctor said uncertainly.  After an affirmative nod from Yaz, she dug four communicators out of her pockets and handed them out.  “Just in case we get separated.  Oh, also,” she pointed her sonic at a nearby monitor, bringing up an image of a small round metal device that looked similar to the bomb on the Tsuranga.  “This is what you’re looking for.  If you find it, contact me straight away and we’ll meet back here.”  She handed Graham another small device from her pocket.  “That’s a tracker.  I’ve set it to find the converter.  It’ll go ding when you’re near it.  Alright fam.  One two three…break!”

She headed off down the corridor, Yaz trailing behind her.  “Oh no, never doing that again,” she mumbled to herself, “definitely sticking with bye.”

*****

Using the sonic to guide them, the Doctor and Yaz found themselves searching a large storage room filled with hundreds of shelves.  “It’s definitely in here somewhere,” she called to Yaz, “the sonic’s going crazy.”

“Can it narrow things down a bit?  It’ll take forever to go through all this.”  Yaz replied, investigating one of the shelves.

The Doctor fiddled with the sonic’s settings.  “No sorry, the energy readings it’s giving off are to generalised.  Don’t worry, I’ve already told Graham and Ryan to start heading this way.”

“The ships massive though, it’ll take them ages to get here.”

“We’d better get cracking then,” she grinned at Yaz who just rolled her eyes and got back to work.

No more than a minute later she heard Yaz whisper across to her, “Doctor.”  Something about her tone of voice instantly caught the Doctor’s full attention and she headed over to her.  Yaz was staring over her shoulder looking petrified as she approached.  She was about to ask what was wrong when she heard a growl from behind her.

She turned to see a giant shaggy mass of a creature snarling at them.  It looked similar to a wolf but was three times the size and furrier, with very long canines that jutted up past its upper lip.  “Oh,” the Doctor said, trying not to show any panic or fear, “hello there, how can I help you?”

She received a growl in response and then her stomach bottomed out when she heard an answering one from behind them.

“I thought you said there was nothing alive on board,” Yaz whispered urgently down her ear.

The Doctor waved her hand frustratedly behind her.  “Now’s not the time.”  She looked around urgently and saw an opening to their left.  There was an open door at the end that she hoped was lockable.  She reached her hand behind her again, fumbling for Yaz’s hand.  Catching it, she said, “when I say so, run left and head towards that door, understand?”

“Yes” Yaz’s voice came back shakily, clearly terrified.

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep you safe,” the Doctor said with more confidence than she felt.  “On the count of three.  One..two…THREE!”  Not letting go of Yaz’s hand she darted left dragging her along.  They both let go as they started sprinting for the door, growls and snarls following them.

 _Just twenty more feet,_ she thought, _just ten more…Yes!_   She reached the door side by side with Yaz, charging through it and throwing their shoulders against it.  They got it shut just before the first animal reached them, felt it slam against it as the Doctor whipped out her sonic pointing it at the locking mechanism and bolting it closed.

“Well, that was close,” the Doctor panted out grinning at Yaz.  No matter how many times she got into these dangerous situations, there was always a part of her that revelled in the excitement.  Yaz however was looking at her with narrowed eyes.

“You said there was nothing on this ship.  You said this would be a ‘quick in and out job’,” she mimicked the Doctor, using air quotes to emphasise her point.

“The Tardis swore it was unoccupied!” the Doctor attempted to defend.

“The Tardis was clearly wrong,” Yaz huffed.

The Doctor put her hands on her hips and glared at Yaz.  “Oi, the Tardis is never wrong.  She obviously just…miscalculated.”

“So she was wrong,” Yaz said sarcastically.  “What’re you doing?” she asked as the Doctor fiddled with her communicator.

“Telling Ryan and Graham to keep their distance till we find a way out of this.  No point putting them in danger as well.”  She sent the message, then started to analyse their surroundings.  The only entrance to the room was the door they came through which currently had at least two very large creatures throwing themselves at it.  It appeared to be some kind of side storage unit for broken and unusable equipment, much smaller than the main room and littered with damaged parts.

The Doctor was genuinely puzzled.  The ship they were on was once owned by a species called the Veth.  They were highly technologically advanced and were in the habit of abandoning their older craft in deep space once they’d outlived their usefulness.  She’d had a number of dealings with them in her long lifetime and had never come across anything like the creatures on this ship.  They didn’t seem to be intelligent based on the way they were mindlessly throwing themselves against the steel door so they couldn’t have piloted themselves here from another ship.  That could only mean they’d always been here, but then why did the Tardis not pick up their life signs when she did her scan?

After a few minutes the banging died down, the creatures finally realising the door wasn’t budging.  The Doctor approached a nearby monitor, hacked into it with her sonic and accessed the security cameras in the storage bay.  There were now four of the creatures, all sat at attention staring at the door, not moving an inch.

“What’s the situation?” Yaz asked from directly behind her, making her jump.  She spun around, not realising how close Yaz had gotten and almost fell into her arms.  She regained her balance and backed up a step.

“Those creatures are guarding the door, look.”  She gestured to the monitor and Yaz approached it as the Doctor tried to get her heart rate under control.  Danger she could handle, but an attractive woman standing close to her?  Apparently that’s what would do her in.

Done examining the monitor, Yaz started looking around the room clearly looking for another way out.  “I’ve already checked,” the Doctor said, “there’s only the door we came in through.”

“What about the air vents?” Yaz said, pointing at them running around the edge of the ceiling.  “I reckon we could fit in there.”

“Oh I hate sci fi movies, making people think they can crawl through vents,” the Doctor huffed in annoyance.  She turned to face Yaz, explaining, “They’re designed to extract excess carbon dioxide from the ship’s atmosphere, a few minutes in there and we’d suffocate.”

“Oh,” Yaz looked disappointed, “well, we can’t just stay in here forever.”

“No, we can’t,” the Doctor said, moving away and poking around amongst the broken equipment, “but we won’t have to.  Just give me ten minutes and a bit of quiet and I’ll have a workable plan.”

*****

Thirty minutes later, the Doctor was sitting on the floor holding her head in her hands and rocking, occasionally muttering “think, think” to herself.  Yaz had examined every inch of the room, unable to find anything useful.  The Doctor would glance up in her direction every now and then, feeling guilty for the situation they found themselves in.

The boys had eventually got in touch with them, asking what they could do to help.  The Doctor had told them to make their way back to the Tardis and double-check the scanner to make sure it was working properly which it apparently was.  How could it have missed these life forms?  It was the most sensitive scanner in the known universe.

All of a sudden it came to her.  She smacked herself in the head and started chanting, “Stupid, stupid Doctor, I can be so thick sometimes.”

She sent a message to Graham, explaining to him in great detail how to change the scanner to search for a different type of energy.

“What Doctor, what is it?” Yaz asked startled, as the Doctor stood up and started pacing, muttering to herself.  Interrupted, she turned to Yaz.

“I think I’ve just figured out why the Tardis didn’t detect any life-forms.  The Veth are one of the most technologically advanced species in the known universe.  They don’t like other species taking their technology, which explains why we had to break through all those security algorithms when we came on board, but they’re also incredibly civilised.  They don’t like to hurt intruders, so what’s the next best option?”

Yaz looked confused for a moment, then understanding dawned on her face.  “Scare them away.”

“Exactly.” She responded, beaming.  This is why the Doctor liked pairing off with Yaz, she kept up with her so effortlessly.  That was the only reason.  Of course.

Her communicator pinged with a new message, Graham telling the Doctor about the massive energy reading just outside the door they were behind.  “Brilliant, I was right!  Those animals aren’t really there, they’re holograms!”

“Then we can just walk out and head past them, right?” Yaz asked.

The Doctor’s face fell.  “Possibly not.  Veth holograms can interact physically with organic beings, a bit like the ones on Star Trek.”

Yaz looked alarmed.  “But you said they wouldn’t hurt us.”

“Hurt us no, but we are still trespassers.  My guess is they’ve been programmed to chase us off the ship and if that doesn’t work, to hold us until security can arrive.  Unfortunately given there’s no crew, they’d just hold us indefinitely.”

“So we’re still stuck then,” Yaz exclaimed, folding her arms.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her with a smirk.  “I didn’t say that.  Now that I know what they are, I can hack into the ship’s systems and disrupt the holographic generators.  No generator, no guard dogs.  Then we can pick up what we came for, head back to the Tardis and be home in time for tea and biscuits.”

Yaz smiled at her.  “I knew I shouldn’t doubt you.”

“All in a day’s work,” the Doctor responded, moving towards the monitor.  She pulled out the sonic, bringing up what seemed to be a layout of the ship’s systems.  As she worked, she wondered if now was a good time to bring up what had been bothering Yaz lately.  There was a good chance after this was over she’d go back to avoiding her and who knows how long it would be until they were alone together again.

“So you’ve been avoiding me,” she began, cursing her inability to be subtle regardless of what body she happened to be in.  “Any particular reason?”

“Is this really the time?” Yaz replied with a sigh.

“I find conversation helps me focus,” they Doctor responded, cycling through menus and codes faster than the human eye could follow, “besides if somethings bothering you, the sooner I find out what it is and sort it out, the better.”

“It’s…nothing.  At least nothing you need to worry about.”  Yaz mumbled the last part of the statement, making the Doctor frown.

“If it’s bothering you I’m going to worry, sorry I don’t make the rules,” she said softly, then paused.  “Is something going on with Ryan?”

Yaz looked at her sharply.  “Why d’you say that?”

“Well you spend a lot of time together at the minute,” the Doctor said, trying to sound as casual as possible, like her happiness didn’t hinge on the response, eyes not leaving the screen in front of her.

“There’s nothing going on with him if that’s what you mean.”  Yaz sounded amused by the very notion and the Doctor breathed an internal sigh of relief.  “He’s just…helping me figure something out.”

“Nothing I can help with?”  she asked.

There was a delay in the response, and the Doctor tore her eyes away from the screen to look at Yaz.  She looked uncomfortable and was staring at her feet.  “No, not really.  It’s sort of about you.”

“Oh?” the Doctor inquired, trying her hand at casual again as she seemingly returned her attention to the screen.  Seeing Yaz look so nervous made her worry though.  “You don’t want to leave do you?”

“No, of course not,” Yaz was quick to reassure her.  “It’s something else.”  The Doctor was about to ask what when her attention was caught by the information on the module.

“Oh, that’s not good.”  Yaz looked worried.

“What’s not good?”

“The Veth don’t mess around with their security protocols.  The holographic generators are tied to the life support systems, if I shut them down we lose air, atmosphere, light, heat, everything.”

Yaz looked truly panicked now.  “Why would they do that?”

“Probably to stop intruders from doing exactly what I’m doing.  There must be something…” she leaned over and rested her head against the console, then sprang up again a minute later.  “Yes!  Maybe.  But it wouldn’t give us much time, and it’s very dangerous.”

“You feel like clueing me in, Doctor?” Yaz asked, grabbing her arm.

“Sorry,” the Doctor said, taking her hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze, “got carried away.  I could feed a virus into the holographic systems.  It wouldn’t take long for Veth security to find and neutralise it, but it should give us enough time to get through the door.  After that we’d just have to make a run for it to the Tardis.”

“And be back in time for tea and biscuits,” Yaz grinned, squeezing her hand.

The Doctor grinned back.  “Brilliant Yaz.  How about it, feel like going for a run with me?”

“Always.”

The Doctor turned back to the computer, reaching into her pocket and handing Yaz the sonic.  “It’s already set to unlock the door, just point and click when I tell you to and start running for the Tardis.  Don’t stop for anything I’ll be right with you.”

Feeling her move away, the Doctor started inputting code as fast she could, just about keeping ahead of the computer security.  “Okay Yaz ready…ready…NOW!” she shouted, slamming her finger down on one last button.  She heard the door opening and brief snarling that suddenly disappeared.  She turned and sprinted through the open door, Yaz just ahead of her.  They just reached the door of the cargo bay when the lights flickered and a howling could be heard behind them.

“Go Yaz, go!”  she shouted, running as fast as possible.  She was glad this body seemed to be in good shape given how far away the Tardis was, and Yaz was obviously fit thanks to her police training.  She pulled her mind away from that particular train of thought and focused on putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible.  They somehow stayed ahead of the chasing pack, and eventually she could see the Tardis ahead of them, the doors wide open and Graham and Ryan urging them on.  They were about fifteen feet away when she saw Yaz fall.  Barely even slowing she charged towards her lifted her with ease into a fireman’s carry and sprinted on, stumbling through the doors as they slammed shut behind her.

She just about kept her balance and gently lowered Yaz to the floor in front of her.  Yaz’s face was bright red, and she was staring at the Doctor in a way that made her squirm.  “Thanks,” she breathed, not breaking eye contact.

The Doctor found she couldn’t look away, mesmerised by the large brown eyes in front of her.  “You’re welcome,” she breathed back.

The Doctor couldn’t tell you later who moved first or why they decided to do this now but the next thing she knew her lips were on Yaz’s.  It wasn’t gentle or even particularly romantic.  It was intense and a little but messy but, the Doctor thought, didn’t that just sum them up perfectly.

She was vaguely aware of someone clearing their throat nearby, and then hurried footsteps heading away, but for all she cared it could be Daleks invading the Tardis and she wouldn’t care.  Nothing was more important than Yaz, Yaz’s skin, Yaz’s soft hair, Yaz’s amazing lips…

Eventually they pulled away, the Doctor leaving a gentle peck on the tip of Yaz’s nose if she did so.  She could feel the muscles in her jaw aching, both from the intense kiss and the enormous grin she didn’t believe would ever leave her face.  Yaz’s lips were swollen and her pupils were completely blown.  She was also grinning in a rather dazed way, like she wasn’t quite sure where she was.  _I did that_ the Doctor thought smugly.

“Wow…that…that…wow,” Yaz mumbled incoherently.

“Yeah, same.”  The Doctor pulled away a little more but took Yaz’s hands in her own, rubbing her thumbs along the knuckles.  They were smaller than hers, she thought, more delicate.  She had no idea why that thought came to her, and shook herself, raising her head to stare into Yaz’s eyes once more.  “Well, we’ve never done that before.”

“Nope, no we haven’t.”  Yaz still seemed to be struggling her way back to coherence.  She shook her head.  “Was that okay?  I mean, it felt amazing but did you…want that?”

The Doctor raised a hand to Yaz’s cheek and smiled softly at her.  “Yes, very much.  And I’d like to do it again.  As much as possible.”  With that she leaned in and kissed Yaz again, softer and more gently this time.  After she pulled away, she looked at Yaz a little confused.  “Is this why you were avoiding me, and talking to Ryan so much?”

“Yes,” she replied shyly, “he was trying to convince me to go for it with you, but I was so nervous around you I could barely function so I just started avoiding you.”

The Doctor smiled again and pulled her into a hug, completely astonished that this perfect woman wanted her.  “Well you’ve got me now.  What do you want to do with me?”  She pulled back slightly and looked into Yaz’s eyes yet again.  They’d developed a rather hungry look that made the Doctor’s knees go all shaky.  Yaz pulled away, took one of the Doctor’s hands in both of hers and started pulling her towards the corridor leading to their sleeping quarters.  She hit the lever on the way past the controls to launch them into the time vortex, grinning like a Cheshire cat as she was half dragged towards Yaz’ bedroom.

*****

Hours later, she burst out into the control room in nothing but a robe, shouting “We never got the power converter!”  Yaz just rolled her eyes in amusement, watching her pilot the Tardis to their next destination.

**Author's Note:**

> Unfortunately I have a super busy weekend, so that last prompt won't be up until probably Monday. As always comments and kudos are very much appreciated! X


End file.
